Tuesday, June 26, 2007

As I keep making more of these encaustic panel paintings, I keep thinking of how to store them in the studio. And how will they be taken care of and stored by galleries. I got out my Uline catalog and looked and looked. Finally, I went to their site and just plugged in 13 x 13 x 3" in the corrugated cardboard category and came up with what I thought would be a good solution. These are called "literary mailers" and resemble a good, heavy pizza box but with the 3" depth. Taking advice from Joanne Mattera's wonderful encaustic book, I have lined the boxes with small bubble wrap and put a piece of glassine on the top of the panel. I also printed out an image onto light weight poster sheet I had in the office...and a small image for the spine in case they are held in the gallery storage this way.........voila! I think this will do to protect the panel and also make it easy for me or the gallery people to pull this work when not hanging on the wall.

I can also pack this up with extra bubble and enclose in a larger box for shipping when necessary.

Now....somewhere on the internet, or in a book, I found a statement an artist printed out to put on the back of their encaustic paintings.....hum, now where is it? I need something similar edited to fit my work. Hope I don't have to just go and re-invent the wheel on this.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

I almost forgot to take a picture of the encaustic collage I mentioned last night. I could change it a little...like scraping back into some of the map type. BUT, probably not as I prefer people to make their own stories up about the work.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

I think this is gonna have to be the title of the next encaustic. Who knows where these ideas come from? Anyway, I was working on the last two panels and applying collage elements Saturday when Curry took the last pictures. I still had to figure out the problems with the first ones. And I think I have....I applied too much heat with the apprehension that my elements wouldn't stick down and not really having any experience with fusing. Now I know it works better to just lightly heat the surface, place elements, then apply a lot of medium, fuse lightly and just let it dry. Then you can scrape back when you want to see more of the collage pieces and leave the rest buried. Or that's the way it's working perfectly for the pieces I'm working on right now.

Back to the title stuff...........my daughter and her boyfriend came by to see her dad on Father's Day and they looked around my studio. He's a pilot...and is going to fly me out to PineTop AZ for my next show at the Joyous Lake Gallery in August. So he said, he'd luuuve to have a wax painting. (I did a really nice collage for him when he flew me to Santa Fe a couple of years ago.) Anyway, after they left it dawned on me that the collage element in the painting needed lots of work and I set to adding a few pieces here and there from some maps from a trip to France.

..........Lo and behold, I looked at it and suddenly the original element of a rice paper with threads running through it looked just like all those big glass windows in so many airport terminals........heck some of my mark making could have been interpreted at runways (lets don't get too carried away here) and then with the map that I suddenly realized pointed to the Salvaza airport,....You can see why that title just had to be.

Now if it wasn't so dark I would take a picture..........tomorrow I will although I covered up a lot of the map elements and it may be hard to be except in person.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

On these pieces, I've already got a couple of layers of medium, lightly fused and cut up some collage pieces to lay on top. I put a larger piece on one panel and a smaller one on the other. Now I'm adding a lot more medium to get it all "glued" down.

Who knows what will happen but I'm gonna try laying in some oil paint and layering wax medium over it, fusing, and see what happens. I, also, think I'll get out the graphite and see what happens. I noticed it's kinda hard to "draw" anything on wax so I'll just keep experimenting around and see what happens.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I worked some more on the latest encaustic from yesterday....I think it's working better for me, both design wise and surface wise. Before it needed a lot more wax build up. As I do that, the surface values and colors changes........so just playing it by ear (no other way)..I applied more wax to the foreground areas, scraping and fusing.

As I was holding it up to get a better perspective I noticed out of my peripheral vision, the other 7 pieces hanging on the easel wall. This one looks like it could be the micro view of the first one. Weird, huh!

Monday, June 11, 2007

Curry's idea of hooking the heat gun up to the circuit in the utility room is working. So, for now I haven't tried out the new torch....still gathering courage.

But, I did do some cleaning and re-arranging in the studio and got some wax down on the 8th panel. It's still in early stages but heck....it's getting hot. The temps on yahoo say 88 but feels like 94 with the humidity. But since my studio depends on just the a/c coming in through an open door and a fan, it's hot enough to stop for the day. Maybe later if it cools off.

This is just a start...................Maybe I was wanting to see some water and it translated into this beginning.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Yep.....went out and got me a butane torch....while I was there in Lowe's I also got a cheap window box fan and a good fire extinguisher.

I joined a new artist group....the International Encaustic Artists. And from information I'm reading, maybe considered I should trade my heat gun that draws so much power for a butane torch. Got me a little uneasy as this stuff is flammable and I'm not that much of a tool person. Don't get me wrong, I luuuuve tools and art supplies but I'm a little uneasy about flames/heat shooting out of a torch. I was this way with the heat gun at first, too...took me about an hour to figure out this is a neat tool only to be confronted with the power problem. One highly recommended butane torch I discovered had to have a proprietary refill that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find locally and easily........SO I bought a different one and found they have a kinda new model that says it's "all the power and half the size". That sounded good to me as I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and don't want to hold anything too heavy for long.

Humm...now I gotta go clean out the studio and there is WAAAY too much stuff in there and it needs organizing again and I can then set all this stuff up. Guess I'll have to get up early if I want to "vent" fumes out by way of an open window with a box fan. If so, that's just the way it will have to be until I think of an alternative. My studio used to be a 20 x 20' garage...but part of it is about 6 x 17' art storage closet. I think now I need at least a 20 x 40' studio ....and preferably with A/C, an exhaust fan and heavy duty electric breakers.....oh yeah, lots of light for my failing eyes

Buffing the two encaustic collages. Ya' know I think it takes longer for the pigments in the wax to dry enough to buff when you use oil paint for a colorant than when you just use the encaustic paints you buy. If it does or not, these two pieces with lots of paper collage elements took even longer to get dry enough to be able to buff up. It didn't help that I kept adding more wax medium either. My friend Christy says she thinks it's best to wait about 6-7 days anyway.

I luuuuuve the beautiful shine you get when you do buff them up....but my pieces are not the kind of encaustic works that have the very smooth, flat, mirror-like finishes. I didn't plan on doing that since I like the real... and apparent texture whether or not it's wax or acrylic.

One of these pieces has elements that are much thicker than the other elements....I was trying to figure out what I thought was the best way to handle this. Is there a best way, anyway? My way is the best way for MY work. As long as it doesn't fall off in the floor anyway.

I still haven't checked with the Dallas gallery owner to see if she's going to want to see these in person.........maybe I'll wait until I get all of them done. What a "waffler" I am, huh! I may even head to Dallas tomorrow for a couple of days but I haven't packed yet. The weather keeps going from sun to rain all within hours around here. Time for the sun to stay out for awhile.

Well heck....blogger won't let me load the two images. Maybe I'll close out this post and then post them later.